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$NEAR vs $ICP Dom may be right about the cryptography, but he's losing the only scoreboard that pays anyone. > Chain TVL: $244M vs $12M > Below ATH: -76% vs -99.7% > Market cap / TVL: ~25x vs ~100x > Since Feb : 4.3x vs flat 👉 What Dom actually said about NEAR Dom shared a PhD engineer's review calling Confidential Intents a permissioned instance with trusted operators, no public code and no public operator list. He later escalated to calling it snake oil and floated legal action over vetKeys, putting his odds at 70% to 85%, though all of that remains allegation. 👉 Where the criticism lands and where not On the trust model he has a point, since a private shard with a handful of permissioned validators and a TEE bridge is not threshold cryptography. Disclosure is weaker ground, because NEAR described the permissioned shard and TEE bridge publicly from its February launch. 👉 What the market chose to pay for Confidential Intents now holds $171M, up 6.4x since June, though part of that growth was incentivized. All of ICP holds about $12M. 👉 My take You could argue users never asked for the purest design, they asked for private swaps with compliance built in, and NEAR shipped that first. Dom's engineering points deserve a technical answer, but a founder attacking a rival from 99.7% below ATH will always get read as marketing. ICP's own docs also say standard subnet state is readable by node operators, so neither side offers privacy by default. If you had to pick, does cryptographic purity still matter when the market keeps paying for the practical version?

DON'T MAKE THIS MISTAKE ❌ You are on the verge of another bull market where $BTC is set for $180k in 2027 The next few weeks are to add more Bitcoin and Altcoins. Those who missed $20k in 2023 are missing $80k in 2026. Here's what happened and why you should not make the same mistake again. 👇 Bitcoin just reclaimed its 50 SMA, and the last time that happened after a deep bear market, it led to a 294% rally. Most people called it a dead cat bounce back then. The setup today looks very similar, and very few people are talking about it. 👉 The 2022 setup looked exactly like this Back in 2022, Bitcoin bounced from $16k and pushed back above $20k, right as it moved up through the 50 SMA. Most traders still treated it as a bear market rally and kept waiting for another leg down. That hesitation is what made it such a good entry for anyone paying attention. The move that followed added almost 295% from that base to the cycle top. 👉 Why the 50 SMA decides the phase The 50 SMA has acted as a clean dividing line between bull and bear phases in this cycle. Bitcoin is now trading around $81.6k, above the 50 SMA sitting near $76.1k, after a long stretch below it. Holding above that level is what separates a real trend change from a short relief move. A retest of the average would be normal and healthy, as long as it keeps acting as support. 👉 What a repeat could look like If this plays out like last time, a similar structure from here points to roughly 120% upside. That would put Bitcoin near $180k sometime in 2027. We are early, and this looks a lot like the first stage of a new bull market rather than the end of one. Nothing is guaranteed, and fakeouts do happen around key averages. Scaling in over time and watching the 50 SMA as your invalidation level is a safer way to approach it than chasing.

The median token on this list is 23% off its high since 20 Aug. That’s a 30% move just to get back. For $STRK, $STONK and $PONS, the gap is 133% to 253%. Most of the catalysts that sent them there haven’t gone away. Here’s where each one stands 👇 🔹 $PONS +253% to its high Why it ran: Binance Alpha listing on Sept 2 plus record launchpad fees, briefly ranking fourth among all protocols Needs: Robinhood Chain launch activity back at September levels, since 80% of fees go to PONS buybacks 🔹 $STONK +217% to its high Why it ran: Raydium LaunchLab integration, then AAVE, AVAX and NEAR base pairs plus Bybit and BloFin listings Needs: a tier-1 spot listing 🔹 $STRK +133% to its high Why it ran: StarkWare’s plan to turn Starknet into an independent post-quantum L1, which took it nearly 5x in under four weeks Needs: governance actually approving the L1 move. Monthly unlocks of up to 127M STRK run until March 2027 🔹 $LIT +53% to its high Why it ran: revenue-funded daily buybacks, rising DEX volume and a large Cumberland transfer the market absorbed Needs: the CFTC filing landing in November, before team and investor unlocks start in late January 🔹 $PUMP +41% to its high Why it ran: back-to-back $15M+ fee weeks feeding buybacks and burns Needs: memecoin volume to return, or the new pre-IPO tokens (OpenAI, Polymarket) to drive fees 🔹 $ONDO +35% to its high Why it ran: the launch of Ondo Intelligent Portfolios, built on BlackRock-developed strategies Needs: a US green light for stock perps 🔹 $ICP +30% to its high Why it ran: the Cloud Engines plan, which sends 20% of enterprise revenue to buy and burn ICP Needs: proof the burns are happening at scale 🔹 $HYPE +25% to its high Why it ran: record open interest, aggressive buybacks and growing institutional access, peaking near $98 on Sept 23 Needs: a concrete US regulatory path 🔹 $NEAR +20% to its high Why it ran: confidential perps on near.com, Ondo tokenized stocks on NEAR Intents and NYSE Arca approving Bitwise’s NEAR ETF Needs: real ETF inflows 🔹 $AERO +20% to its high Why it ran: positioning ahead of the Aerodrome and Velodrome merger Needs: the merged Aero proving it earns more than the two DEXs did apart 🔹 $ETH +16% to its high Why it ran: an August rally driven partly by short covering, which stalled near $2,800 Needs: a confirmed Glamsterdam mainnet date 🔹 $INJ +8% to its high Why it ran: the CEO’s meetings with the White House, SEC and CFTC, plus a new institutional validator Needs: an INJ ETF approval 🔹 $BTC +6% to its high Why it ran: a short squeeze and strong ETF inflows, peaking on Sept 21 Needs: ETF inflows to hold and a clean break of the $86K to $87K ceiling

Payments has been the strongest fundraising narrative in crypto this year. That capital is chasing the thesis. Here’s the altcoin map leading the payments narrative. 🟠 Fast Peer-to-Peer Cash (Speed and low fees for everyday transfers) Nano ( $XNO ) → Feeless, near-instant via block-lattice design → One of the purest remaining pure-payments projects Dash ( $DASH ) → InstantSend for near-instant confirmations → Optional privacy features, long-running merchant tools Bitcoin Cash ( $BCH ) → Bitcoin fork with larger blocks for throughput → Built for everyday cash-like spending 🟠 Cross-Border & Remittance (Fintech and telecom rails for international transfers) Stellar ( $XLM ) → Very low fees with fiat on/off-ramp anchors → Used in remittance corridors and past MoneyGram ties Celo ( $CELO ) → Mobile-first chain for payments and stablecoins → Phone-number-based transfers, local currency stables Algorand ( $ALGO ) → Fast finality with predictable low fees → Strong asset and stablecoin support Hedera ( $HBAR ) → Hashgraph network with high throughput → Adopted for enterprise payments and micropayments Telcoin ( $TEL ) → Links blockchain with telecom networks for cheap remittances → Runs a regulated US digital asset bank plus eUSD stablecoin 🟠 Streaming & Payroll Infra (Continuous value flows instead of one-off transfers) Zebec Network ( $ZBCN ) → Real-time per-second money streaming for payroll → Crypto cards and multi-chain disbursements Alchemy Pay ( $ACH ) → Fiat-crypto payment gateway → Lets merchants move between fiat and digital assets Huma Finance ( $HUMA ) → PayFi protocol turning payment flows into yield → Finances and settles real payment activity 🟠 Privacy-Focused Payments (Cash-like confidentiality on sender, receiver and amount) Monero ( $XMR ) → Private by default via ring signatures and stealth addresses → Hides sender, receiver and amount on every transaction Zcash ( $ZEC ) → zk-SNARKs power optional shielded transactions → Selective disclosure plus growing institutional interest MobileCoin ( $MOB ) → Privacy-preserving payments built for mobile → Integrated into messaging apps like Signal Zano ( $ZANO ) → Hides sender, receiver, amount and asset type → Confidential assets plus private staking 🟠 High-Throughput Payment Chains (Volume, low fees, stablecoin and merchant rails) Polygon ( $POL ) → Ethereum L2 with deep stablecoin liquidity → Widely used for card settlement and payment apps Avalanche ( $AVAX ) → High throughput with fast finality → Subnet flexibility for payment-specific chains Near Protocol ( $NEAR ) → Scalable L1 with low fees → Developer-friendly tooling for consumer payment apps Aptos ( $APT ) → Move-based chain with parallel execution → Built for consumer and payment-scale throughput Payments doesn’t need a bull market to matter. It needs people sending money, and that happens every single day. → That’s the thesis these altcoins are all betting on.